The philosophy of dwelling

“To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. it means to dwell. The old word bauen, which says that man is insofar as he dwells, this word barren however also means at the same time to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil, to cultivate the vine. Such building only takes care-it tends the growth that ripens into its fruit of its own accord. Building
in the sense of preserving and nurturing is not making anything. “
Martin Heiddeger

Heidegger's essay "building dwelling thinking" is today one of the most popular philosophical texts read by architects. In the essay Heidegger states -"only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build“. As human beings, we cannot fail to dwell, as dwelling is the essential existential core of human being in the world, from which there is no escape. The questions are: how do we dwell in our particular situations and how can we shape the quality of our dwelling? Heidegger links the quality of our dwelling to the quality of buildings. Heidegger argues that, in our modern age, human dwelling is reduced and so is building. His explication of why we dwell less fully today is complicated; he suggests that, in part, it is because we manipulate and demand from our world rather than it sparing and preserving.

In 1961 Parker Morris created a report on housing space standards in public housing in UK (a set of minimum criteria for good housing construction, design, and facilities). In 1967 these space standards became mandatory for all housing built
in new towns, extended to all council housing in 1969.Unfortunately, the standards stopped being mandatory in 1980, and little of the public housing built in the quarter of a century meets all of Morris' aspirations. Nowadays the UK has some
of the lowest space standards in Europe.